The Cabal by David Hagberg

probably dating back to before the war. “Did you know that two of his men were probably armed?”
    “I asked you a question.”
    McGarvey turned back. “So did I, and that’ll be ‘sir’ to you.” They were leaning and he was leaning back. He had wanted to make two points here: one was putting Sandberger on notice, and the second was to place his suspicions into the record of at least one government’slaw enforcement or intelligence apparatus so that when he came into the CIA’s spotlight, dealing with him would no longer be a simple matter of the dismissal of a grief-stricken father-in-law.
    A bleak expression came into Mueller’s eyes, as if his hopes of an easy assignment had just been dashed, and he turned around to face forward.
    They finally turned down Homberger Landstrasse, another reasonably pleasant tree-lined street of some apartment buildings, and what might have been small government installations or military barracks, called
Kaserne,
but of the old-fashioned sort, and McGarvey suddenly knew where they were taking him.
    “I didn’t know the BND was using the Drake Kaserne,” he said. The series of mostly low buildings behind a tall iron fence had first been occupied in 1930 by the German army. After the war, from 1956 to 1992, the U.S. Third Armored Division had headquartered here, until the German government took it back using it to house various agencies, including the customs unit of the Federal Border Police.
    He’d been here once, before the Germanys were reunited, when he had stalked a Russian KGB general hiding out in East Berlin. It was a bad period, which he didn’t care to remember, except that it had stuck in his mind then as now that Germans, at least at the governmental level, were still trying to live down the Nazi era, and never knew quite how.
    “Yes, you were here, I saw that in your record,” Mueller said. “So, you have a very good memory, which will be excellent for our purposes.”
    They pulled up to a gate at the
Kaserne
, which was opened by a uniformed civilian guard with a sidearm under the watchful eye of another guard just at the doorway to the security office.
    “May I call my consulate here in Frankfurt?”
    “I’m sure that whoever you sent those photographs to will have already notified your people,” Mueller said. “And we’ll find out who you called.”
    McGarvey couldn’t help himself, and he smiled. “I don’t think so.”
    “We have some pretty good people on this side of the pond, too, you know, you arrogant bastard.”
    Another little bit of the puzzle dropped in place for McGarvey. “What exactly is it that Administrative Solutions does for the German government? Can you at least give me a hint?”
    But Mueller said nothing, until they stopped at a nondescript, one-story building near the rear of the installation, and he and his partner got out and Mueller opened the rear door.
    McGarvey got out and went into the building, which looked very much like a military interrogation and holding center, and was led down the corridor to a small room furnished only with a metal table and two chairs. The walls were bare concrete, the floor plainly tiled, with a single dim lightbulb set into the ceiling and covered with wire mesh.
    He sat down at the table and Mueller sat across from him; his partner leaned against the wall beside the door.
    “Shall we begin with why you came to Germany under a false passport, but aboard a CIA aircraft?” Mueller said.
    “To talk to Roland Sandberger, as I’ve told you.”
    “Why did you bring a pistol?”
    “I always travel armed. Have for years.”
    “And what about the silencer?” Mueller asked. “Were you planning on killing Herr Sandberger?”
    McGarvey shrugged. “Only if I felt that it was necessary.”
    “What would have constituted a necessity?”
    McGarvey took a moment to answer. “I had a reasonable expectation that either he or his bodyguards would have tried to assassinate me.”
    Mueller glanced